Good morning Vietnam

Since turning 30 I find it impossible to sleep past 0730 but I am currently married to Rip Van Winkle, Michael was not kidding in his earlier post about not doing anything with a hour starting in 0. Luckily for me the hotel provides breakfast so I knew he'd have to be up by 0900!

At breakfast we met a couple from Estonia who have been traveling for two years. They got jobs in Australia making so much money that they are finally heading home just to buy an apartment each and use the income to travel more. They gave us some tips for the city and we headed out for a walking tour.

First stop was the Ben Thanh Market to look around. I realized today that we go to the mall a lot in the States and generally come home with something but here we just do a lot of window shopping, it's easier to say no when you have to carry it for months. We did pick up some interesting flower tea, it's a dried flower that you use for up to 5 cups of tea. We picked one up for my Iraq battle and one for the Blue/Fleizachs. Michael's excited about experimenting this new find with Greg. Then we made our way over the Reunification Palace which is completely circa 1960s architecture.

Next up was the war remembrance museum for the 'American' war. It's called the American war of aggression and going through it you would think that we came in guns blazing and left without a single causality. To us it was clearly one sided but its their country and they can perceive it as they wish. It did make us appreciate the US and its ability to show both sides to most situations. 65% of Vietnamese citizens are under the age of 30 and there's currently a two child restriction on families so most of the population wasn't alive during the war.

Right after exiting the museum Michael had a fall of epic proportions and the Vietnamese got to share it with him. He has no idea what happened but all of a sudden he's yelling "it won't stop" and I hear a local yelling "whoa whoa whoa". I look over and Michael is in a complete split. He say his foot just wouldn't stop moving. Since he's a pro at recovery and people are clearly laughing he's up and walking in a flash, it's not until we're down the road a little that we access the damage and I'm bent over in laughter. Luckily he's got some heavy duty flip flops that have dual anchors because one came out and we were pretty far from our hotel. After he recovered we made our to the next stop on our tour, Notre Dame Cathedral and the post office, stopped at some travel agents to figure out how to get around. I ended the evening with an awful pedicure and an equally awful foot massage. Michael ended the evening with .50 street beers.

-M16 at the war museum, yep that's the same weapon I had in Iraq in 2011!
-almost a complete causality
-That's a happy new year ball behind us
-Cuba and Vietnam are best friends, yeah we had nothing to worry about, right?? I like how they made they made the Cuban hand dark
-Michael with his favorite SE Asia shake, I had to stop him from going twice today